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She cries out, watching her best friend make contact with a truck and soar through the air.
She cries out again, watching her best friend get run through with falling construction pipes.
She cries out once more, as her best friend’s hand slips out of hers and she goes tumbling down stair after stair after stair.
Jirou wakes up again in a panic. She turns onto her side, reaching out and tilting her phone just a crack upwards. Her vision flickers, blinding her with the same screen she had quickly grown tired of seeing. “August 14th”. She sighs, leaning back into her bed. To say these two days were beginning to irritate her would be an understatement, and repetition after repetition had only seen her continue to watch Momo die in more ways than she ever had expected to. To be fair, she hadn't expected it to happen even once, let alone a multitude of times. However, there was something oddly familiar about this situation that she couldn't place.
The first time she woke up, she was too shaken by her friend's death to process what had happened. The following couple times, she had tried avoiding any possible death, shoving Momo out of the way of the truck, avoiding stairs, even going as far as to implore her to stay in her room all day. After that, she tried using her earjacks to sense if anyone, anywhere had said anything that would hint towards triggering this phenomenon. No such luck. The same empty conversations only grew more irritating each time she heard them. She had even considered interjecting in a few, but if anything, she was starting to give up on any of her classmates being of any help. The thought of bringing the issue up to any of them crossed her mind briefly, but she quickly waved it away - they'd look at her like she was insane. Besides, she wasn't about to attempt to explain something she couldn't understand herself. Stumped, she moved to relisten to the same conversations, hoping something worth considering would come to her in the meantime.
A conversation about schoolwork, a conversation about grades, and a conversation about the utter CONCEPT of bringing an AP stylebook around with you and actually READING it (this one had, initially, left her incredulous, and one time she had interjected to poke fun at just how much of a dork Tenya was being) all floated through her consciousness, each one familiar in a uniquely discomforting way. Mentally preparing for another day of helpless grasping for straws, she settled for mimicking the conversations she had already memorized by heart to pass the time.
"Did you hear the new song?" For Mina's voice, Jirou had settled on an attempt at a higher voice, fittingly for her lively demeanor.
Jirou parroted back in an exaggeratingly nasal voice for Kaminari, "You're gonna have to be more specific than that, you know."
"Y'know, the Miku one! Just released sometime in the past week?"
"Do you realize how little that narrows it down?" Kaminari-Jirou retorts, then freezes. Miku. That's why this entire ordeal had invoked a sense of recognition in her. She had never been the biggest fan of Vocaloid music specifically, but her love for rock music had definitely led to a familiarity with the genre, especially certain producers and songs, some of which she'd tried to learn herself. What stood out specifically, though, was one of these songs - Kagerou Daze. A faint memory had formed in her head, one of a pair of kids, stuck in a time loop. She rushed back to her room, opening up her computer, and poured herself into trying to find any content that would explain this cycle she had found herself trapped in.
After a couple hours, she had made a few realizations. First of all, the first few ways Momo had died were all represented directly in the MV of the song Jirou had once looped repeatedly in an attempt to dissect its musicality. While she wasn't so confident that she was on the right track, it at least helped ease her fears that she was looking in the wrong direction. Second of all, the media project that song had been based on was convoluted. With multiple possible routes and a mountain of content, at some points, she did not feel much closer to any answer than when she had started. Finally, in every route, one of the characters stuck in the time loop was bound to die in some meaningful way, sacrificing themselves or their being to free the other.
Step. Knock.
The computer slammed shut, but before Jirou could shove her notes somewhere inconspicuous, the door began to move. She turned to stare as her door creaked open, and in came Momo.
"You alright? I haven't seen you all day," Momo inquired. With a start, Jirou realized that in her searching, she hadn't actually spoken to anyone at all since waking up. "What's all this?"
Jirou started to attempt to explain it away, but Momo had already started poking at the notes Jirou had started. Minutes later, they sat down on Jirou's bed.
"So? What do you think?" Jirou started, attempting to break the ice.
"I'm not sure how to begin processing any of this," Momo began. "It seems that to escape the loop, you'd have to sacrifice yourself. And if it means losing you, then no. Frankly, in that case, I think that's stupid."
Jirou wanted to retort, wanted to say that she was fine with dying if it helped break them out of the loop, but Momo continued. "I don't think the loop seems to function only around the two of us. The fact that the world around us still goes about in its daily fashion seems to support that point. We'll keep searching."
"But..."
"No buts. We will find a way to get through this. We're heroes in training, after all."
With this, she turned towards Jirou.
"I'll head out for tonight. Get some good rest, you'll need it if we're going to find a way out of this heated and hazy situation."
The pair smiled at each other, and that night's sleep was the most restful Jirou had had since August 13th.